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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Tournament compensation systems, employee heterogeneity, and firm performance
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Uschi Backes-Gellner
  • Kerstin Pull
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Human Resource Management
Publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 1099-050X
Volume 52
Number 3
Page Range 375 - 398
Date 2013
Abstract Text Tournament compensation systems are widely used in practice and have been extensively analyzed theoretically. However, one major problem has hardly been studied in a company context so far: Although it is theoretically well understood that tournament compensation systems are only effective when employees are homogeneous, it has rarely been analyzed what companies can do when they are confronted with employee heterogeneity. In our article, we derive hypotheses on the performance effects of tournament compensation systems in a context of employee heterogeneity based on tournament and expectancy theory. Using personnel records from incentive travel contests, we are able to show that performance is lower in a situation with employee heterogeneity, but that in heterogeneous tournaments, incentives may still work for a subgroup of employees whom we term the “threshold group.” In addition, we also show how companies manage to design the information disclosure systems necessary to install effective “handicapping” or “league-building” systems in order to increase the effort-performance expectancy.
Related URLs
Digital Object Identifier 10.1002/hrm.21535
Other Identification Number merlin-id:8334
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